Police Commissioner Howard Safir said yesterday that the independent city agency that investigates civilian complaints of police misconduct is overstepping its authority when it formally cites officers for lying.

Pointing to a Jan. 5 determination by Michael D. Hess, the city's corporation counsel, Commissioner Safir said that the agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, was ''exceeding its mandate'' under the City Charter when it referred cases to the Police Department with determinations that officers had lied, an offense for which they may be dismissed.

Such matters should be handled entirely within the Police Department, Mr. Safir said.

In his finding, Mr. Hess wrote that the C.C.R.B. had the authority to substantiate only one of four types of misconduct: excessive force, abuse of authority, discourtesy and offensive language. He also said that the board had the authority only to investigate complaints by citizens, and not to make an independent determination of whether an officer had lied.

The board referred 65 such complaints to the Police Department last year. Mr. Safir yesterday stressed that he was committed to dismissing officers who lie, but said that such cases would be better investigated by his Internal Affairs Bureau.

Earl S. Ward, a board member, said that the 13-member panel disagreed, and considered lying to the agency's investigators to be an abuse of authority. He said that board members met last year to discuss the matter, after Commissioner Safir had asked them to stop submitting to the Police Department cases citing false statements. Mr. Ward said the board decided to continue the practice.

''I don't think this opinion is going to change the board's view,'' Mr. Ward said. ''I'm comfortable in the position that the C.C.R.B. has jurisdiction over officers who lie.''

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Mr. Ward, who was appointed by the City Council, said that the agency had submitted other substantiated complaints of abuses that were not based on complaints made by citizens, and that the Police Department had not protested those cases. He said that the board often substantiated complaints that officers had failed to fill out stop-and-frisk forms after they stop, question or search someone.

''The Police Department hasn't said anything about our jurisdiction on stop-and-frisk reports, so it raises questions when they say, 'You don't have jurisdiction on false statements,' but they don't say anything about other types of cases,'' Mr. Ward said. ''I think the law department's analysis is incorrect, and it's not an analysis that takes into account the abuse of authority.''

Another board member, William Kuntz, said the board should meet with Mr. Hess to discuss the issue. He suggested that the City Council should amend the legislation that created the board so that it can cite officers for false statements.

''It's up to the the City Council, the mayor and the police commissioner to change the legislation to make it clear that police officers may not lie to the C.C.R.B., and if they don't change the legislation, I guess they are telling the public it's O.K. for police officers to lie to the C.C.R.B,'' Mr. Kuntz said.

Mr. Safir's comments came just two days after he released year-end statistics showing that civilian complaints had declined 1.2 percent in 1999 from 1998.

But those figures, which police officials later said he had obtained from the board, failed to include the last four days of the year, a period in which there were 29 complaints, board officials said. Including those complaints, the decline was only 0.58 percent, board officials said.